Memphis_Bill

... Gordon Freeman?

That is not "A characteristic of F2P games." That has happened in... what, *every* MMO, before F2P was more than "Hey, look, cruddy flash browser game."

... Hmm. I was going by PWiki when looking at those values. That would be helpful info to have. Have the precise name that it gives? PW just gives "Ranged defense." (Or it could be added as a note after the description.)

Unless I'm missing something obvious. Also possible. I'm still at work, after all, and that's never healthy for thinking.

Yeah. Him. Strike force guy next to the stargate. >.>

It's you.

Would that it were truly impossible to ever find a "healer" in this game. It's a dream.

I'll play whatever I feel like playing. If I'm enjoying it, I'm having fun. If I'm not enjoying it, I'm probably not on a trial, as I'd log off and/or switch to something that IS fun.

(And frankly, my Earth/FF is a blast. And my Warshades love BAFs. Free extractions while Nightstar lays around.)

All powers wouldn't be affected though. And, as mentioned, I'm not against being able to completely suppress them on your own screen - I wouldn't argue with seeing that at all.

BUT... as mentioned - you have to know that those are affecting you. And I'd prefer having the major players - those that cause the effect quickly/consistently and are going to be seen more often - altered. Such as Barrier.

After all, it's one thing to have a few people (such as one of my friends) bothered gradually by... I cannot for the life of me rmember the name now,t he widow status effect protection. That's something they may not see. Barrier? That's going off constantly in the upper levels - and just imagine a friend or family member playing COH perfectly happily for a month, then *bam,* hit with Barrier when they try their first Trial and getting a migraine or, worse, going into a seizure. Would you *necessarily* look at the game and say "Oh, that one power did that, let me adjust it?" Or even pin down the game itself as being the immediate culprit? (Don't forget, they've been playing just fine for some time.)

You have to know the problem is with the power(s) before you can turn off the effect. Programmatically it may be "elegant," but usage-wise...

Plus, of course, I'd rather have a few reworked now and bring the specific types of effects that cause problems to our devs (such as Tunnel Rat up there,) so they can avoid the whole situation in the future. Easier to fix a few now than fix ten full sets worth or something in the future.

In addition, the silly idea that "I didn't pay for this to have toned down graphics" is in any way relevant... really. Who says the new graphics would be "toned down?" Different, in a way that WON'T affect people negatively, yes. "Toned down," no. (See old vs new sonic resonance.)

I can only hope you're (meaning gohan, and others with this pov) never on the OTHER side of the table of this, where you or your friends are driven away by a few small animations causing them physical pain and/or siezures. (And as far as "I've never heard," I know for a fact people will just excuse themselves from a team or quit without saying "This is causing me problems" - or even know specifically that it IS causing them problems, they'll just suddenly have a migraine hit.)

And I do have to point out (looking at Cende's post,) while I'm not against that sort of a tool - again, I've seen enough people mention leaving for headaches that haven't pinned it, at that time, to a specific power. If you can tell the first time, hey, great - though you still have to deal with it that first time. If you don't know, or (like me with the original sonic) have never had migranes, etc. before so don't even think about the powers... that's a fair bit of needless suffering. Especially when you may not be exposed to the power all the time and even associate it with something going on in game.

Yes, everything you post - reply, new, etc - counts toward the number. For instance, I have some guides - say, this one, with three posts making up the guide - that would add three posts to my count. If you look at the stuff I released when AE was first released... that's a lot of posts. I *believe* stuff from the beta boards also counts, though they don't show, as do modded posts (IIRC, they're not deleted, they're hidden or moved to some mod category, or at least were.)

So, I write up, say, a guide to "How to cap debt as a Kheldian" that takes 10 posts. (I write them up ahead of time, btw, then paste them into the guide section.) That's 10 posts. I answer two questions that come up on there the day I post, as well as do my usual wandering through the forums... probably 15 posts, 20 posts. Regardless of if they're responding to my original topic-starting post or not.

An edit, of course, doesn't do anything to the post count.

(Actually, I'm mildly curious as to how many posts have gone into the guides I've put up. I've got 35 guides, if you search on them... most multiple posts long, and of course discussion and replies. )

Thought I'd said it - that quite often (or so it seems) when we see name complaints, we see the "they're on my friends list and I never see them so it's obviously inactive" thrown in shortly after.

Only reason for putting that there.

/this.

And they're probably not thinking "Hey, there are *five more powers coming at least that will build on this, perhaps this is a bit much at this stage."

When the name scripts were run, ages ago, all it did was mark the name as "Available." The first script was 35 and under. The second time it was under 6 (and 90 days inactive.) If nobody took the name and the person came back, the character was just there like nothing had happened. If someone DID get the name, I *think* it was immediately generic'd (it's been a while) and the user would be prompted to rename them when they logged in.

The characters were not deleted.

... y'know, I hadn't thought of that. I'm not sure if they "count" that when they look at an account being active or not, though. If so, I'd say it makes the name-wipe argument (as in "really inactive accounts") a bit stronger.

I suspect, however, that "inactive" is going to be looked at as "Your subscription has not been a paying one for X amount of time, you've been inactive X amount of time" - regardless of reactivation weekends.
Edit:
Sent a PM to avatea to ask.

Edit2:

More complex, but if they did something like this - well, more datamining. See if there's a cutoff point where people just don't come back or some such.
I still think the highest levels should be left alone, and that there should be an opt-in, "I'll never be back, wipe it out!" option - though I'm sure that'd cause people to complain anyway.
Still, tier it:
- Trials not converted after 90 days, completely deleted.
- Up to 3 years, current script.
- 4 years, old script (35 and below.) - Opt in email sent here, too, to delete/free everything.
- 5 years, new script - 45 and below are free. Email sent out at this time asking if you'd like to just delete the account.

More like dealing with headaches from pounding my head on the desk when people don't seem to get what incredibly ridiculous assumptions they're making... sort of like "people with high post counts obviously don't play the game enough to be worth listening to."

You're one of the few I've actually heard check that. So often it's "They're on my friends list and I never see them, so they're obviously never on."

I still, personally, would prefer an opt-in for that. Send the email first. (If the email bounces, well...)

While you're throwing out questions, "so all these names people HAVE to have that they insist are "tied up on inactive accounts," they're 100% sure aren't being used by active subscribers?"

No, "I have them on my friends list" means nothing.

The "average start times" bit has been answered many times - people going through and starting leagues THEN entering the queue skew that start time badly. If you have one person on LFG for an hour, and two 24 person leagues going in instantly, the queue's not going to show an hour. I've had it say "Under a minute."

As far as succeed? I've had it work two or three times, mostly going in for the heck of it, and each time, yes, it was successful. That is out of probably 15 attempts since release, though that's (like I said) mostly for kicks, sitting for about half an hour as I do other things. Usually I just go wherever the teams are forming.

The Incarnate powers are not part of their core powerset. The origin defines (roughly) what they are at the start. Just because, for instance, my MA/Regen stalker (natural) finds themselves able to blast a group with Ion, for instance, doesn't mean everything else is invalid - any more than their using jet boots (costume piece, but techy) to fly does.

/nitpick off.

(And "Fleet judgement" - *throws an aircraft carrier at a group of enemies* - ... wait, not othat?)